Courtesy of Mish.
With the NSA snooping around anywhere and everywhere, violating the constitution in the process, the following development was inevitable: Harvard & MIT Students Have Created an Email So Secure Even the NSA Can’t Crack It.
Nearly a year ago, former CIA technical assistant Edward Snowden stepped forward to say he was responsible for one of the most explosive leaks in history. The National Security Agency was exposed, and Andy Yen, a Harvard PhD candidate, was appalled.
“I posted on Facebook, ‘Hey, I don’t really like the fact the government is wiretapping us. What’s happening in America?'”
At the time, Yen was working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, known as CERN, where the elusive “God Particle” was discovered, coincidentally alongside a handful of other Cambridge, Mass.-educated students from either Harvard or MIT. A team of five suddenly formed, all focused on creating a service stronger than Lavabit, Snowden’s email provider.
That service is called ProtonMail, and it is launching out of private beta Friday.
ProtonMail is end-to-end encrypted email that is based offshore in Switzerland, where the team could operate free of surveillance mandates. Although “encryption is not necessarily a new technology,” according to Yen, “only one to two percent of the population knows how to do it.” ProtonMail handles the entire process without forcing users to install any software, and promises NSA-proof correspondence.
“Even we don’t have the ability to read that email,” Yen asserted. “If we can’t read it, we obviously can’t turn it over to any government agencies.”
A main motivation behind starting ProtonMail was the human rights component. Referencing a writer in China who blogged about the service, Yen said, “Say you’re an activist in China fighting for democracy, this is a life or death service.”
The catch is similar to that of Dropbox’s model — the service will be free, unless you’re a “power user,” and then ProtonMail will ring in at roughly $5 a month.
Supposedly, if you can understand Gmail, you can understand ProtonMail. If it’s as good as advertized, will it be banned?
This is what it had to come down to. Government nonsensically spying on everyone led to a more-secure service that freedom lovers and criminals alike will embrace.
By the way, the encryption might be secure, but that will not stop the NSA from hijacking entire computers.
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